Category: Minisink

Sesquicentennial Historical Address — Sussex County, NJ sounds like a solemn and impressive bit of history.

This address, By Francis J. Swaze, part of the sesquicentennial observance of Sussex County, was delivered at Newton, NJ on September 2, 1903. While it claims only to be accurate through the Civil War, it’s interesting that the extractive industries (iron and various other minerals) get short shrift here despite their role in American history beginning with the Revolution – or even before; “The Old Mine Road” is one of the oldest thoroughfares mentioned in colonial-era literature. As we look at the history of this county today, we see these industries as perhaps the most important part of the county’s history.

That said, we understand and appreciate the traditional emphasis on farming and related aspects of country life, and exploits with regard to the native Americans and in the Revolution as being of greatest interest to the audience for these remarks back over a century ago. In addition to the history captured in this address, one can read it to get a better sense of priorities in American thought over a century ago. Further, considering this was an address to people who lived in the county a long time, and whose ancestors were likely among those mentioned, this would have been a crown-pleaser.

All in all, it’s a useful document! And it’s now available for download.

Replacing our CDs has shown up a benefit we hadn’t really anticipated.

Here’s what happens. As our customers know, our CDs usually contained more than one item. However, we tended to title the CD with the name of the most important (our call) item on the CD.

However, when we replace our CDs with downloads, each publication on the CD becomes a product unto itself. In that way, it gets its own listing in our catalog and on the various geographic and special interest pages of our website.

Here’s an example. Recently we retired our CD-ROM about the History of the Minisink Region of New York State (and Pennsylvania, and New Jersey). The featured component of that CD was Stickney’s 1867 History of the Minisink Region. However, there were two other publications on that CD: Twin River Valley, the 1834 yearbook of Port Jervis High school, and a particularly scarce 1922 Directory of Port Jervis (which included neighboring locations).

The CD never sold as well as we thought it would; we suspect the reason was that if people already had access to the Stickney book, they went no further and never discovered the Port Jervis Directory or the Port Jervis High School yearbook on the same CD.

Well, now that we’re reissued the three as individual downloads, we think more people will be seeing these additional publications — that were actually there all along.

Of course, our main catalog is HERE, so why not have a look at it, too?

Bottom line: we think that replacing our CDs will help you find things you never suspected we had just as much as it helps us streamline our processes and deliver quality content to you faster and more economically.